Which Placemats?

How to choose the right placemats

Placemats, making the right selection

This choice will change depending upon the situation in which you will be using your placemats. Generally speaking the setting is going to be domestic and the main consideration is that you find a set of placemats that will protect your dining table from the heat of plates and that will stop any scratches from appearing on your table.

Traditional cork backed placemats

The main reason the traditional cork backed placemats like the Plymouth Pottery Sunset Placemats are still produced is because they work so well, doing exactly as they are designed to do, ie protect your table from heat and scratches. There are alternatives such as woven vinyl or silicone placemats and other floppy styles of placemat, which also work and they look great and are easy to clean. But if you are really concerned about table protection then cork backed placemats are going to be safer.

Once that requirement is covered, you then need to choose placemats that will, at a minimum, look nice, but ideally that look fantastic, with colours and shades to match the rest of your dining room. All the cork backed placemats companies have a wide range to select from and there should be a placemats pattern out there for just about everyone, such as the Plymouth Pottery White Poppies Placemats.

Placemats can be forever, or not

One of the advantages that placemats have is the ability to completely change the tone and style of your dining room or kitchen just by switching to a different placemats design. There are placemats for informal everyday mealtimes like the Pimpernel Dans le Jardin placemats and others for more formal occasions, such as the Pimpernel Classic Emerald placemats.

With many options for cork backed placemats priced at around the £20 mark a set of placemats does not have to be for life. When you get bored with seeing the same design you can just put the placemats in a drawer and choose another design.